Interwoven: A Weavers Recollection of Time: Art Agenda, Jakarta

18 November 2020 - 30 January 2021
“It began with a single continuous thread, only to make sense once woven and intertwined. As a cloth, it recollects a plateau of memories stained with love, lost and what is to become.” 
A. Sebastianus Hartanto (b. 1995) is an Indonesian artist who mastered the art of weaving at his grandmother’s hometown in East Java. From his time as an experiential ethnographer, he began to see weaving as a ritual of recollection and commemoration. For him, the sacralization of cloth manifests in masa-kala (2020), the gathering of ten thousand threads as studies of time, kaen duka (2017), the blurring of memories through ikat dyeing, and the repetitive act of intertwining individual threads.  

Sebastianus was awarded the William Daley Award for Excellence in Art History and Craft in 2017. Having studied anthropology and fine arts at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design 2018, he blurs the line between traditional and contemporary art by presenting the tradition of weaving within today’s context. He currently works at Rumah Sukkha Citta in Java as an ethnographer and developer of textile crafts.   
“It began with a single continuous thread, only to make sense once woven and intertwined. As a cloth, it recollects a plateau of memories stained with love, lost and what is to become.” 

A. Sebastianus Hartanto (b. 1995) is an Indonesian artist who mastered the art of weaving at his grandmother’s hometown in East Java. From his time as an experiential ethnographer, he began to see weaving as a ritual of recollection and commemoration. For him, the sacralization of cloth manifests in masa-kala (2020), the gathering of ten thousand threads as studies of time, kaen duka (2017), the blurring of memories through ikat dyeing, and the repetitive act of intertwining individual threads.  

Sebastianus was awarded the William Daley Award for Excellence in Art History and Craft in 2017. Having studied anthropology and fine arts at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design 2018, he blurs the line between traditional and contemporary art by presenting the tradition of weaving within today’s context. He currently works at Rumah Sukkha Citta in Java as an ethnographer and developer of textile crafts.